Does it Matter What Site You Get Your Steroid Injection?

Epidural Steroid Injection
When people hear the phrase steroid injection they conjure up images of professional athletes using this enhancement performance drug, and with good reason. Many professional athletes take steroids to enhance their performance. But steroid injections are used for medicinal purposes as well, such as cortisone shots. Steroid injections are also used medicinally for lower back pain as in epidural lumbar injections, cervical epidural injection, and caudal injections for the reduction of leg pain. Steroids are not all bad. Usually, the side effects of steroid injections happen when people abuse them. Sometimes, but rarely, do people experience side effects from epidural injections. If they do experience epidural injection side effects it happens in .01% of the population. Steroid injection for medicinal purposes can be a godsend.

Cortisone is a steroid that is naturally produced in your body from the adrenal gland. When you are stressed out, cortisone is released into your blood stream. However, injectable cortisone is synthetic and although it is a close derivative of what your body produces, it does not get injected directly into your bloodstream. Rather, it is injected into a particular area of inflammation. Synthetically engineered cortisone is more potent than natural cortisone in that it relieves pain for a longer period of time than natural cortisone.

Steroid Injection - Which Site to Inject
Depending on what type of steroid is being injected and for what purpose, the steroid injection site is